Hacker News: rthomas6

New comment by rthomas6 in "Big banks explore venturing into crypto world together with joint stablecoin"

rthomas6 — Mon, 26 May 2025 15:34:35 +0000

I really wish someone would make a stablecoin not pegged to some currency but to a basket of goods. A CPI-coin, if you will. How would that work? Maybe similar to the programmatic way DAI works, by collateralizing other assets in a way that make DAI some desired price.

How cool would it be to have a decentralized coin that has zero percent inflation.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Moody’s strips U.S. of triple-A credit rating"

rthomas6 — Sat, 17 May 2025 00:15:21 +0000

No, it's not the United States's military dominance that makes American debt a safe bet. It's that the Dollar is the worlds reserve currency. Other countries need to transact regularly in dollars even if the United States is not involved in the transaction. And the only way for other countries to get those dollars is through 1. A trade surplus with the US, or 2. Buying US bonds.

New comment by rthomas6 in "U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter"

rthomas6 — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:38:45 +0000

Well I'm moving to get out of Alabama, so not everyone...

New comment by rthomas6 in "U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter"

rthomas6 — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:36:44 +0000

You can look at per capita GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars

New comment by rthomas6 in "Show HN: I built a hardware processor that runs Python"

rthomas6 — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 12:35:35 +0000

* What HDL did you use to design the processor?

* Could you share the assembly language of the processor?

* What is the benefit of designing the processor and making a Python bytecode compiler for it, vs making a bytecode compiler for an existing processor such as ARM/x86/RISCV?

New comment by rthomas6 in "Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks"

rthomas6 — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:17:57 +0000

Eh. Google may be better than Microsoft in this regard, but this is basically what they're doing with Android. AOSP is now lacking a lot of core functionality that comes with Google Pixel phones, such as RCS messaging, emoji reactions to text messages, camera features and photo editing, voicemail transcription, crash detection. Even the keyboard is worse in AOSP.

New comment by rthomas6 in "An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip"

rthomas6 — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 03:22:19 +0000

More than giant corporations make IP. What about independent artists making original art?

New comment by rthomas6 in "US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU"

rthomas6 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:56:03 +0000

So you don't think employers will raise wages as the cost of food increases?

New comment by rthomas6 in "US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU"

rthomas6 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:44:31 +0000

I worry about this, but I started worrying about it less when I read about Purchasing Power Parity. The same stuff costs less in poorer countries.

New comment by rthomas6 in "US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU"

rthomas6 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:41:25 +0000

The flaw I see is centered around this paragraph.

> How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.

Rising prices due to tariffs won't pressure the Fed to lower interest rates. It will increase inflation and worries of inflation, which will actually pressure the Fed to RAISE interest rates. A slowing economy won't stop inflation... We are likely entering into a period of "stagflation". The way out last time was very high interest rates and short term economic hardship.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?"

rthomas6 — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 16:09:03 +0000

My personal opinion: It will be similar to how computers affected jobs.

No jobs are safe, but no skilled jobs are immediately on the chopping block either. AI will boost peoples' efficiency, such that it will take one skilled worker to do what it used to take five skilled workers to do. Law briefs, ad copy, scripting, code refactoring, engineering. Everything will use AI as a tool, but AI won't replace most people. People will instruct AIs to do sub-tasks and validate and integrate its responses. Similar to how people use computers today. Some peoples' specialized skills will be rendered obsolete, similar to what happened with secretaries, switchboard operators, elevator operators, proofreaders, etc. with computers.

I think it will change what it means to do many jobs, just like working with computers changed, for instance, accounting, or visual design. Working with specialized AI tools will become an essential part of many jobs, just like working with specialized software tools is today.

Long term, I think AI will eat further into current jobs, but I think they will be replaced with different human jobs. I think there will still be skilled careers and roles to be had, but I don't think any of us can predict what those jobs will look like.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Has the decline of knowledge work begun?"

rthomas6 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 17:36:43 +0000

In the Culture books it was AI...

New comment by rthomas6 in "Has the decline of knowledge work begun?"

rthomas6 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 17:07:55 +0000

The way I see it you only have two real choices:

1. Raise wages to match global increased productivity

2. Democratize ownership

That's it.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?"

rthomas6 — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:53 +0000

But unless you were nobility, meat wasn't available at every meal, or even every day. It cost too much. Meat for most people was a special occasion kind of thing.

Ever notice how the English words for animals have Germanic roots but the words for their meats have French roots?

Chicken -> poultry

Cow -> beef

Pig -> pork

That's because the peasantry, the ones raising the animals, spoke Old English, and the nobility, the ones eating the meat, spoke French.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers"

rthomas6 — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:25:00 +0000

Wait, this comment made me aware of the existence of iCloud Relay. Apple built their own Tor only for Apple users? Why would they do that? Why not use Tor???

New comment by rthomas6 in "Microplastics in the human brain"

rthomas6 — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 03:14:17 +0000

Well, it still tells us something. What are the upper and lower bounds of whole brain microplastic content, given that 25% variation?

New comment by rthomas6 in "Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index"

rthomas6 — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:58:46 +0000

It's not irrational to avoid exposure to unknown or poorly studied chemicals. Avoiding something for which one has no evidence in either direction is a good risk avoidance strategy. In general, when it comes to my body, I prefer a whitelist vs a blacklist approach.

New comment by rthomas6 in "I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it"

rthomas6 — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 19:05:29 +0000

I think this issue is a lot of why ChatGPT feels smart to me. It actually parses all the parts of what I say and tries to respond to it comprehensively. It doesn't always succeed, but it's usually better than my experience asking a multi-part question to a random real-life person in a support role.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts"

rthomas6 — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:22:10 +0000

The building materials aren't what's causing housing to be unaffordable. It's single family zoning and land speculation. The best thing to do to lower housing costs is to drastically reduce single family zoning (some cities have like 90% land area zoned for detached single family houses only!) to allow for infill development of SFHs into denser housing, and to implement an unimproved land value tax to discourage profiteering on land.

New comment by rthomas6 in "Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts"

rthomas6 — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 12:36:59 +0000

I wish it were standard practice to have some kind of house battery (what Tesla calls "Powerwall") for new construction homes. They could smooth out peak usage in this exact way, in addition to making individual homes more resilient to occasional power outages.